Archive for the 'Journals' Category

This fiftieth anniversary edition demonstrates NLR’s strengths and weaknesses. Stridently intellectual but sliding into pretension, it is devoted to the idea of a left-wing movement but divorced from actually existing social forces. Here we are presented with, among other articles, Perry Anderson’s incisive analysis of Russian and Chinese revolutions, Robin Blackburn on class struggles in post-reconstruction era America, and a US medical doctor’s searing call to arms in the battle for healthcare. Editor Susan Watkins ponders the future: “Can a left intellectual project hope to thrive in the absence of a political movement?” Her answer? “That remains to be seen.” SS

This special issue of City investigates the theory and practice of resisting commodification in urban communities. The case studies offer a fascinating insight into struggles for justice in the city and include a diverse range of examples across the Europe, the US and elsewhere. The theoretical contributions are less impressive, though Slaters’ brilliant and surgical dismantling of gentrifying approaches to ‘regeneration’ provides a notable exception. Otherwise the specific modalities of urban power are not persuasively defined as autonomous from power operations in capitalist society as a whole whilst the strategic outlook eschews the working class without presenting a viable alternative. AB

Special Issue; Volume 13/Numbers 2-3/June-September 2009

Routledge; 2009; 210 pages

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.George Orwell